A look back at 2024, when Filipinos ate out more than ever, but also ate well at home.
With whispers of Michelin Guide inspectors making the rounds mid-year, even the biggest skeptics of our local dining scene—and Filipino food in general—are beginning to think that perhaps we have finally found our place in the culinary sun.
2024 was a huge year for our Filipino chefs (both here and abroad), local restaurant groups, international franchises, even SMEs, many of whom have sprouted during the pandemic and are now joining the big leagues or simply steadily chugging along. Even big players from other industries are looking towards F & B and adding food businesses to their portfolio, hoping to perhaps be the next Jollibee.
With new restaurants opening almost every week, industry insiders and followers are dizzy from trying to keep up, while also patronizing older favorites who hope to maintain relevance by offering fresh a la carte items or tasting menus. Notable openings this year come from our local chefs demonstrating that fine dining is well and alive, but perhaps not in the traditional ways that we are accustomed to. Chef Aaron Isip’s Kasa Palma is a tropical oasis in a converted split-level in Poblacion, his own slice of El Nido in the city which is a multi-concept restaurant that serves a la carte in the air-conditioned lanai, a family-style set menu, and tasting menu options that reflect his love for seafood, a penchant for Southeast Asian herbs and spices, and his impeccable French training.
Chefs Thirdy Dolatre and Kevin Navoa of Hapag— enforcing their front of house by partnering up with their sommelier Erin Recto— seem to have found their footing with the new tasting menu inspired by Western Visayas cuisine, their second one since they moved their progressive Filipino concept to glitzy Balmori Suites, Rockwell from Katipunan Avenue, QC.
They lead their contemporaries into bringing modern fine dining beyond the traditional constraints of classical French techniques and its typical western mold, encouraging creative freedom and cultural exploration. The move into grander dwellings sheds progressive Filipino’s quirky persona, demonstrating not only a shared confidence among our young local talents, but also the business sector’s strengthening support and interest for local brands and products.
While investors are looking inward, there is a general appreciation among local businesses and their patrons for expertise and specialization. For instance, Spanish cuisine is far from nouvelle, but Asador Alfonso— the Spanish roasting house of multi-awarded chef Chele Gonzalez in Alfonso, Cavite— attracts city-dwellers to their countryside estate with juicy suckling lamb and cochinillo cooked in their wood-burning Maestro oven.
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Homegrown brand Crosta Pizzeria, from founders Ingga Cabangon-Chua and Thomas Woudwyk, continues to garner awards and accolades from all over the world with their distinct style of pizza-making, their chief pizzaiolo Yuichi Ito flexing his chef muscles by creating weekend specials and spending winters at their Niseko, Japan Baby Crosta where he offers a pizza omakase on the second floor of their ski resort location.
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Japanese cuisine continues to be a crowd-pleaser, with travel to Japan becoming more accessible to everyone— from families on a budget to the discerning gourmand in search of unique experiences. In the Philippines, the demand for Japanese ranges from low-brow to luxe. City workers can grab some gyoza with rice from the nearest food court, while those with more money to burn can enjoy fatty toro or horse mackerel flown in that morning from Toyosu Market in one of the many upscale Japanese restaurants.
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Chefs like Jorge Mendez of Modan and Bruce Ricketts of Iai sharpen their skills and knowledge of Japanese cuisine so they can implement their own interpretations to its highly nuanced flavors and traditional applications. While any other time many Filipinos would have balked at anything other than what is “authentic,” both Mendez and Ricketts have earned both critical and commercial acclaim by being respectful towards tradition and on-point with balance and execution.
Filipinos still love steak, and that both local steakhouse brands and foreign franchises continue to jostle for elbow room in our tiny island nation is truly remarkable. Argentinian parillada restaurant La Cabrera and New York-style Wolfgang’s Steakhouse continue to thrive, encouraging globally known names such as Morton’s The Steakhouse to come in and open their first Philippine branch in BGC to hopefully get a hefty share of the steak-crazy market.
Still, we cannot always eat out, and delivery services have become such a huge part of our lives since the pandemic that we can no longer imagine what life was like before this became common practice. Even food that was not conventionally considered as “delivery food” is not available through Grab Food or Food Panda, as well as grocery or deli items that you will need to prepare a fancy meal at home.
Dough and Grocer—an offshoot of Alyanna Uy and family’s F & B portfolio which consists of Bijin Nabe, Prologue, and Prologue D’fined, among others—was a pandemic staple that became a template for many e-commerce businesses that service a wide urban market that has learned to prepare meals beyond the usual silog.
Food, whether prepared by a skilled professional or made with loving hands at home, is truly essential in a culture that has made it a conduit for forging relationships and strengthening bonds. 2024 was a solid year for food and beverage (yes, we did not even talk about coffee, low ABV cocktails, and natural wines, but we consumed those in gallons) and it will only get more exciting in the coming years.
